Some friends doing something different on a Saturday morning! Competing at the Renegade Rowing League! Who’s ready for tomorrow?

All For Time …

1. 500m Row (like start of 2k)

2. 3 Rounds Of:

5 Power Cleans (135/95 lbs)

10 Burpee Broad Jumps

3. 500m Row (like finish of 2k)

Monday’s Rowing WOD is an opportunity to practice both the beginning and end of your 2k race plan while developing power with the hips. Treat each 500 as if they were your ideal 2k. For the first 500m perform your starting sequence with a race start, high 7-10 strokes, and settle to race pace. During the Power Cleans and Burpees work on efficient movement and connection through your hips. Try to go unbroken and consistently jump the same distance for each broad jump. If you’re still working technique for the power cleans, substitute 3 med ball cleans for every power clean to build up your strength and conditioning. As you come into the last 500m you will be feeling it just like the 2k, so focus on breathing and holding onto race pace. When you hit the last 250m start to negative split and practice your sprint for the finish.

Post your overall time to complete all three parts to comments along with your average split for each 500m.

Check out the Renegade Rowing Training Plan for this week below. It’s going to be a solid week, so be sure to hydrate and sleep well. Have your meals and pre/post workout snacks ready to go! You will need them!

Spend 5min working on Breathing Practice (4-count box breathing) in different configurations.

RR Social WOD:

Hike Harvard Stadium @6am on Thursday

Monday’s Rowing WOD will be a good burner to get your lungs going and allow you to really focus on a solid core. The double unders and kettle bell snatches are technical and require a higher focus on skill and efficiency. For the double unders try to keep your wrists loose and get into a good flow that you can maintain. A good goal would be to go unbroken for a minute. With the one arm kettle bell snatch focus on driving through the heels and getting good hip extension to move the weight. A bonus for the KB Snatch is that it requires you to keep a stable core and not allow your torso to rotate. Any movement that involves an anti rotation component and stabilizing of the core is good for rowing. Every time we reach out to the rigger in sweep rowing there is both a compression and rotation on our spines, which can lead to disc injuries over time. By strengthening the core and resisting rotation we can prevent those injuries from happening. So keep that chest up and don’t let the shoulder drop too much through the bottom! Here is a good link from Rogue Fitness on the Kettle Bell Snatch: http://youtu.be/6l2Iu26oWW8

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and got a chance to enjoy time with family and friends. We did the YMCA Pie Run in Middletown and braved the cold to earn our Turkey and Mashed Potatoes! Here is the training plan for this week. Let’s kick off December on a strong note and bring it home for the New Year. Let us know if you have any questions or would like to join the Renegade Rowing Project in fighting for your goals!

One thing that all good athletes have in common is a sense of efficiency. The athlete that can maintain proper mechanics and spend the least amount of energy to complete a task will be able to push harder and farther compared to the athlete that just flies and dies. This weeks’ Rowing WODs introduce a key concept to being efficient in rowing and may improve your efficiency in longer wods.

Checkout the focus for Monday’s RWOD… Start the workout by rowing 1,000m at 28 strokes per minute and holding a 2k+5 split. This will get you warm and ready to go to work. During the 4min rest fit in 20 push ups however you want. Then, set the monitor for 3′ of work and 1′ of rest. Each 3-minute piece is broken into 1-minute sections that should be rowed at the designated stroke rating holding a 2k+7 split.

In order to hold the goal split while decreasing the stroke rating you must perform a ratio shift. A ratio shift changes the timing of the stroke on the drive and the recovery. For example, shifting from 1 on the drive: 2 on the recovery, to 1 on the drive: 3 on the recovery. This is a challenging workout. Use it to develop a sense of efficiency. A proper ratio shift maintains the power per stroke but allows the rower time to breath and prepare for the next stroke a little bit more.

Post your results for this weeks workouts and your Experience with ratio shifts.

Below are some pictures of Mike T. after working on staying connected through the finish. What does your finish look like? Is it efficient? How fast do your hands move through the finish? … Just a few things to think about as we continue to work on suspension through the stroke and balanced finishes.

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s a day of hanging out with family and friends while enjoying good food and football. Many people do Turkey Trots or get up and walk the beach together before digging into a bountiful feast. Hopefully you’ve got something planned. If you don’t, try the Gobble Gauntlet below with your friends. Get outside and be active before relaxing for the rest of the day. My family and I will be doing a 5-mile Pie Run!

During the holidays you may be traveling or away from an erg, so be sure to stay active and get creative with your workouts. If all else fails make sure to complete the weekly challenge. I totally forgot about it last week, so we’re doing the same challenge again. Let’s do this!

It’s been a couple of years since you’ve regularly heard from me on the blog. I’ve been busy sharing the sport of rowing with the world at Community Rowing Inc. While I will still be forging ahead as a Rowing Ambassador at CRI, I wanted to get myself and others motivated to keep training and improving. That’s where the Renegade Rowing Project comes in. I will be doing my best to post every Sunday night with a new plan for the week and a weekly challenge. If you’d like to join the Renegade Rowing Project all you have to do is jump on in and join the fun. Be sure to post your results and experience to comments or share them on social media. We’ll be doing the same using @RenegadeRowing and the tags #RenegadeRowingProject #RowStrong. I look forward to getting after it with you!

Rowing is the utmost definition of Sport in modern society. Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com give two definitions of sport. One, Sport is an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature. Two, Sport is a source of diversion and recreation engaged in for pleasure. Whether you’re a middle school rower just learning to scull or an Olympic hopeful trying out for the national team, Rowing provides challenge, competition, and fun.

Rowing trumps all because it offers the best of sport. It tests our skill and athleticism as individuals and as part of a team. Rowing requires an unwavering calm and trust that pushing yourself to wit’s end without seeing where you’re going will develop personal satisfaction and boat speed. It takes balance, grace, and power. Rowing is saying goodbye to the chaos of life by shoving off the dock and taking time for yourself and your team to focus on a common goal.

A Quick Note

Our plan will be combining the best of many worlds, rowing, fitness, strength, nutrition, mobility, flexibility, and recovery. The goal of this post is to outline all the tools available in our plan. This post will introduce certain principles and ideas that will be important to know when following our plan. If it’s not possible to include all of the details for a certain part of our plan here, then those details will be covered in separate posts. If you only read this post you should have a strong idea of how our plan will run. Just know that everything we do has a purpose and your coaches are happy to explain any part of the plan you may be curious about.

Where Do We Go From Here?

As you can tell our plan is different. It challenges the standard long slow distance model of training by combining more high intensity interval training through strength and conditioning and rowing. The best way to get a handle on our plan is to see it in action. The following attachments outline the Renegade Rowing Training Plan Template and give examples for the work we will be doing day in and day out. The best advice we can give you is to keep an open mind, be ready to learn and work hard, and be ready to be part of something. Take a look at the charts, calculations, and diagrams, but most of all get in the gym, get in the boat, and give it everything you’ve got. This is our plan and we’ll know best how to improve and progress toward our goals by the work we do together. We take pride in being different. We are specialized generalists who are experts in both fitness and rowing. Our plan develops firsthand athletes that know how to compete, work hard, and row fast based on personal experience. We will be strong and row fast for life.